Committee on Climate Change: Government Responses to Annual Progress Reports

The Committee on Climate Change’s (CCC) annual progress report, published in July, recognised the progress that has been made, but also set out some tough messages about the need for further action across the economy. This government have heard that message, from the Committee, from businesses, and from people across the whole country.

The Government response to the CCC’s report sets out the action that is being taken across all sectors of the economy, working through the strong frameworks we have established in the clean growth strategy and the industrial strategy. It also reflects the suite of recent announcements we have made in support of our net zero target. In our response published today, we set out further actions that we will take to deliver net zero, and meet our carbon budgets, including:

Ambitious proposals to improve the energy performance of non-domestic buildings, potentially saving businesses around £1 billion per year in energy costs by 2030;

Development of a new, holistic transport decarbonisation plan to step up the pace of progress towards a cleaner, more sustainable and innovative transport network; and

A proposal to establishing new governance arrangements to drive forward cross-government efforts to deliver the net zero target, potentially including a new cabinet sub-committee on climate change.

This builds on what we have delivered over the last year. Since legislating for net zero emissions in the summer, we have announced around £2 billion to support decarbonisation in a range of sectors, including investment in hydrogen and low carbon technology in industry, electric vehicles and charging infrastructure, and projects to accelerate rollout of carbon capture and storage technology.

We recognise the importance of reducing emissions from industry and we have just set out our detailed proposals for our £315 million industrial energy transformation fund which will support industry to invest in energy efficiency and deep decarbonisation technologies.

The latest contracts for difference auction saw contracts awarded to renewable energy projects that will create enough generating capacity to power around 7 million homes, with the costs of new offshore wind projects falling by a remarkable two thirds between the 2015 and 2019 auctions. This demonstrates the scope for advances in technology to deliver unprecedented cost reduction.

And we will set out further detail on how the UK will make progress towards our net zero target in the national infrastructure strategy this autumn.

In addition to our progress at home, the UK remains at the forefront of international action on climate change. In September, we were formally nominated by our international partners to host the vital COP26 climate negotiations in 2020. We intend to use this role to catalyse ambitious global action to cut emissions further, and harness growing momentum to take us closer to delivering the goals of the Paris Agreement.

At the recent UN climate action summit, the Government announced that the UK will double its international climate finance to £11.6 billion in the period 2021 to 2025. In assisting developing countries, we will draw on the breadth and depth of the UK’s expertise to support the transformational and systemic change needed to deliver a net zero world resilient to the risks from climate change.

In July 2019, the CCC published their third progress report on adaptation, their first on the second national adaptation programme (NAP) detailing action from 2018 to 2023. The progress report contains twelve recommendations for Government spanning four of the key themes of the second NAP, published in 2018; the natural environment; infrastructure; people and the built environment, and business, as well as 33 sectoral progress scores, such as water supply, rail, roads, agricultural productivity, amongst others. The CCC highlights areas of good planning and progress as well as areas where they identify the need for further policy development and evidence to support and monitor the success of adaptation.

The Government response mirrors the CCC’s progress report. The headline message is that we have made progress on adaptation and broadly accept the recommendations made by the CCC. We will build on this progress to ensure the country is well prepared to face the challenges a changing climate brings. The CCC’s recommendations will be addressed in our current and future policies and programmes such as through the 25 year environment plan, the Agriculture Bill and Environment Bill, amongst other policy areas across Departments. In particular the Environment Bill, introduced today, will include ambitious legislative measures to take action to address the biggest environmental priorities of our age, many of which are linked directly to climate change.

At the same time we are demonstrating leadership at a global level on the agenda, driving action as co-lead of the resilience and adaptation theme of this year’s UN climate action summit, where a UK co-led call for action has been endorsed by 112 countries and counting.

We remain grateful to the CCC for their scrutiny, analysis and expert advice, which will be more vital than ever as we set the UK on a firm path to net zero. The challenges of reducing our emissions, and preparing for the changes that climate change will bring, are immense but, the rewards of action will be greater still. This Government have listened to the science and the clear message from across society and we are redoubling our efforts to drive down emissions while seizing the economic opportunities at hand, as we lead the world towards a cleaner, greener, net zero future.

[HCWS3]